KIRKUS REVIEW

The making of two
psychoanalysts: Carl Jung and his loyal, ever supportive wife.

When she was 17, Emma
Rauschenbach, the quiet, shy daughter of an “unimaginably wealthy” Swiss
business magnate, met the impoverished medical student Carl Jung (1875-1961).
Already engaged to a young man from her own class, she refused Jung’s first
proposal of marriage. But eventually, encouraged by her mother, she was won
over by her handsome, intelligent, boisterous, and persistent suitor.
Award-winning documentary producer Clay (Trautmann’s Journey: From Hitler
Youth to FA Cup Legend, 2010, etc.) tries to push Emma to the center
of this sympathetic, carefully researched biography, but Emma’s volatile,
difficult husband intrudes, resulting in a portrait of a troubled marriage and
the rivalrous beginnings of psychoanalysis. Clay diagnoses Jung’s neurosis as a
kind of split personality: a “loud, opinionated, energetic Steam-Roller”
Personality 1 alternated with Personality 2, a depressed, neurotic, “inferior
wretch” who flew into inexplicable rages; withdrew from family life (the Jungs
had five children); and was haunted by disturbing dreams. Confronting her
husband’s dramatic mood swings was one challenge for Emma; another was his
conviction that infidelity was a requirement for a good marriage. Clay
chronicles many “infatuations,” including notorious liaisons with two deeply
unstable patients: Sabina Spielrein and Toni Wolff. Wolff came to live with the
Jungs, with Emma’s acquiescence, serving as Carl’s “anima figure.” Spielrein,
Wolff, and Emma herself became analysts, demonstrating the fluid nature of
professionalism in early psychoanalysis. Clay maintains that Emma’s close
involvement in her husband’s work provided her analytical training. As is well-known,
Freud first considered Jung to be his heir, but Jung came to reject Freud’s
views and, to Emma’s dismay, broke off their relationship. “So we are rid of
them at last,” Freud wrote to a colleague, “the brutal holy Jung and his pious
parrots.” Emma forged her own friendship with Freud, often sharing her analysis
of her husband and herself.

A sensitive biography of
a woman whose emotional and intellectual strengths were the ballast of her
marriage and family.

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